Soomaaliya is one of few cookbooks to examine Somali food and how conflict has reshaped it across the diaspora
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n a video call from Brooklyn, between stops on her book tour, Ifrah F Ahmed is drinking ginger-root tea. The smell transports her to her childhood kitchen, where her mother often baked aromatic cardamom cake.
“That’s a core childhood memory for me,” she said.
For Ahmed, food isn’t just about sustenance. It is memory, inheritance and, perhaps most importantly, a record: “Somali history on a plate,” as she puts it.
